It is known that ordinary dwellings, i.e., dwellings provided by using ordinary building materials such as reinforced concrete or bricks, have considerable drawbacks.
The most significant drawbacks consist in long construction times (often several months), in complicated building methods, in the high cost of the raw materials used, in limited resistance to seismic events, in limited heat retention and in high production and purchase cost.
In order to obviate these drawbacks, building structures have been devised whose walls comprise panels made of expanded polystyrene.
An example of a building structure provided by using walls of this type is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,519,904.
More particularly, U.S. Pat. No. 6,519,904 discloses a method for building load-bearing walls of building structures. Such walls comprise an insulating panel which is arranged within a metallic containment structure, inside which concrete is poured.
The concrete thus poured forms a load-bearing layer of considerable thickness, which rests on the insulating panel.
The concrete layer forms the outer face of the corresponding wall, whereas the insulating panel is directed toward the internal face of the wall.
The concrete layer, inside which a wire mesh and stiffening bars are immersed, interrupts in some regions the insulating panel, thus creating discontinuities at which vertical load-bearing columns are provided.
The containment structure consists of containment elements which are substantially C-shaped and arranged with respect to each other so as to form a rectangular closed profile. The vertically arranged containment elements are provided with a plurality of through slots which the concrete enters, anchoring itself to the containment structure.
Building structures provided by using the building method disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,519,904 are not free from drawbacks, which include the fact that the stiffness of the structure is provided exclusively by the layer of reinforced concrete, and therefore the insulating panels have no structural function and accordingly do not contribute to the absorption of the stresses to which the corresponding wall can be subjected. Walls thus provided, therefore, have a static behavior that is fully analogous to commonly used concrete walls. Further, the behavior of these walls under dynamic stresses is not uniform over their entire extension and in particular on their opposite faces due to their non-symmetrical structure.
Moreover, U.S. Pat. No. 6,519,904 does not disclose how the various walls which constitute an entire residential building are mutually connected and therefore in which way the stresses that act on the building structure thus provided are distributed.
Another drawback of building structures of this type consists in the long construction times that they require, which are also due to the considerable use of concrete.